Digital Financial Reporting

OK, now I am getting somewhere.  I have an updated Excel spreadsheetfor comparing the XBRL presentation linkbases of the 408 SEC filers which I am taking a look at.  This Excel application allows you to:

• Compare one SEC filer's presentation linkbase with another.
• Compare one SEC filer's presentation linkbase to the US GAAP Taxonomy (Commercial and Industrial Entry Point only)
• Compare two pieces of the US GAAP Taxonomy presentation linkbase (again, CI only).

You can see how the tool works here (it is really basic, but I am fiddling with approaches to embedding video in this blog, so here is the video):

I have uploaded two improved tools for viewing SEC filer company taxonomies.  Both tools are written using Microsoft Excel 2003. These tools can be found here:

• Taxonomy viewer tool: This tool allows you to select a company and view the company's taxonomy.
• Taxonomy comparison tool: This tool allows you to select two companies and view each taxonomy at the same time, helping you compare the two taxonomies.

The next tool on the list to create is a tool which allows you to compare a company taxonomy with the US GAAP Taxonomy.  Although, I will only do this for the Commercial and Industrial entry point.

I would challenge people to understand how to write Excel macros to improve these applications (i.e. add new interesting features) and send them to me and I will make them available to others.

I have created two new resources for looking at SEC XBRL Filings.  Both are for looking at XBRL taxonomies used by filers.

The first resourceis a simple little XBRL taxonomy viewer which uses HTML pages.  It is fast and it allows you to look through all the taxonomies of those who filed XBRL with the SEC.

The second resourcelets you look at the US GAAP Taxonomies. Actually, this only provides views of the presentation linkbases of the commercial and industrial (CI) entry point.  That is my focus area for looking at the filings because most filers are in this category and I don't have time or desire to provide this for each US GAAP Taxonomy entry point.

I want to point out an interesting thing about these taxonomy viewers.  If you look at the far right hand side of the concepts shown in these views, you will see a number that is in gray and looks like {ID123}.  Those numbers allow you to link to a specific concept in the taxonomy using those HTML pages.  This little trick is stolen from DecisionSoft SpiderMonkey which allows you to do basically the same thing.  For example, click hereto see what I am talking about. (i.e. you go to the ALLERGAN INC taxonomy "Supplemental Cash Flow Note" which is ID131).  Look at the link to see how this works.  (You will see why this is a handy tool next week when I use it in some other information that I provide.)

I realize that I am throwing a lot of stuff out here.  Hang tight and check back, I will provide a better organized view into all this information so those who what to explore all these SEC filings can do so.

This is a report which compares the presentation neworks of the XBRL filings made to the US SEC.  This is very interesting and somewhat unexpected results. The number of presentation networks in each filing ranges from 6 (9 filers have this number) to 55 (The Dow Chemical Company).

What is rather odd is that only three of the network roles come from the US GAAP Taxonomy.  These are the three and the number of times they are used.

I would have expected that the vast majority of the networks used would come from the US GAAP Taxonomy.  Huh.  I need to check and see what is going on, maybe I am misinterpreting or misunderstanding something.

If you want to go look at the presentation networks of a filer, you can do so here (requires IE 7 or 8) or here (see the 10th column in the table); but this is probably the best option for most people.

The taxonomies published by SEC filers are a wealth of information, if you can somehow look at them.  Well, in that spirit, I have created a number of ways to look at these taxonomies for the purpose of learning more about taxonomies.

Here are several ways I have created to look at these XBRL taxonomies.  All these focus on the presentation linkbase information (for comparison purposes, here is a link to the best way that I know of viewing the entire Commercial and Industrial Companies entry point of the US GAAP Taxonomy):

• Excel-based Taxonomy viewer: This Excel file has macros which read the XML file (see below) of presentation linkbase information.  (Coming soon is a version of this which allows you to compare two taxonomies side-by-side.
• HTML treeview: If you go to this web page and click on the links in the column titled "Link to Taxonomy Presentation HTML (XBRL Site)" you can see a tree view of an SEC filers taxonomy. Here is one example file so you know what you are looking for.
• XAML treeview: This web page lets you quickly browser through a list of XBRL taxonomies.  You have to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or 8 to use this as it is done using XAML.
• XML file: If you go to this web page and click on the links in the column titled "Link to Taxonomy Presentation XML (XBRL Site)" you can access the information in a taxonomy programmatically.  The Excel-based tool above uses this XML file. Here is one example file so you know what to look for.
• Compare extension concepts: This web page lets you compare the extension concepts added by SEC filers.
• Summary of Statistics:  Here is an Excel file which has some statistics about the filings and taxonomy extensions.

More ways to look at this to come.  You can write some really interesting Excel macros to sumarize, slice, dice, and otherwise dig into this information.